by Chris Ward
‘I want to leave,’ she said quietly.
She heard him stir as if he had been on the verge of sleep. ‘What, now? It’s late.’
‘No. I meant leave London. I want to get out, and I want you to come with me. I want to have … a life outside.’
She felt him tense. ‘You know there will be no life until things change?’
The defiance in his voice made her want to cry. She realised suddenly that she loved him, and that without saying it outright he was turning her down. In a way he also sounded like Sebastian. You have to, Airie. No one wants me, do they? You have to do it for us. You want us to survive this, don’t you?
‘I want to see fields and rivers,’ she said. ‘You know, clean ones, not ones filled with trash. I want to see otters and hear owls at night.’
‘It’ll never be over unless we stand up and fight,’ he said. ‘All those things … none of them will matter if you’re always looking over your shoulder for the DCA or the Huntsmen. We can do this, Airie. Together we can do this.’
She nodded, feeling too miserable to say anything more. While he was gone, all she had wanted was for David to hold her and tell her that things would be different, but now that he was here doing exactly that, she only felt hollow, as if every word that came out of his mouth was a lie, just as it had been with Sebastian.
Just one more time, Airie. Just one more. Then it’ll be better, you’ll see.
36
Collection
‘How is she?’
Frank rolled his eyes. ‘Why don’t you take a look for yourself? What do I look like, a goddamn post boy?’
Lindon sighed and started up the stairs, with Frank following behind. ‘Where is she?’
‘Your old room. Remember it?’
‘Of course.’
‘I’m surprised. Been so damn long since you came back. I kept all your teddy bears for years, you know.’
Lindon turned around and glared at his grandfather, but the old man just smirked. Frank was trying to cheer him up, but Lindon could see the hopelessness in Frank’s eyes. He didn’t need to ask about Cah. He knew it was bad.
‘Does she still have the box?’
Frank let out a slow breath. ‘I tried to take it out of her hands and the girl went goddamn banshee on me. There’s plenty of life left in her when she wants it, believe me.’
Lindon opened the door. To his surprise, Cah was sitting up on the bed, wearing a light nightdress that Frank must have found somewhere for her. Her hair was tied back, and while he could see how gaunt her face had become, there was a colour in her cheeks that he hadn’t seen in months.
‘I heard your voice,’ she said. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to come back.’
‘I’ll go make some tea,’ Frank muttered, pushing Lindon inside and closing the door behind them.
‘Has he been feeding you?’
Cah nodded. ‘Fruit pies. Endless fruit pies.’
‘He always loved those. Said survival was all about the vitamins. They tasted like shit.’
‘They taste like London,’ Cah said, and Lindon did a double take, for a moment thinking she had said his name. ‘London,’ she repeated, catching his surprise. She lifted an eyebrow, and for a moment she was the Cah of old, the girl for whom he would give his last breath. ‘They’re not so sweet as to taste like you.’
‘I want us to move into the Tank,’ Lindon said. ‘We’ll be safer there.’
Cah shook her head. ‘I can’t live there.’
‘Why not?’
‘I….’
Her eyes left his, and Lindon knew he was losing her. He took hold of her hand as she lay back on the bed, tucking her legs up into her chest.
‘I grew up in this room,’ Lindon said.
‘I like it here,’ she whispered. ‘I can smell you. It’s like you’re always with me … even when you’re not.’ A single tear ran down her cheek.
‘The Tank people are our people,’ Lindon said. ‘There’s strength in numbers. We can protect each other.’
‘I don’t need numbers. I just need you.’
‘What do you mean? You have me. You’ll always have me.’
‘One day I won’t have you,’ she said. ‘You’ll go. You’ll be London….’
Her voice trailed off. She closed her eyes, and a moment later her breathing began to deepen. He trailed a hand down her arm, then pulled the quilt up over her body. Sleep was perhaps the best thing for her. He didn’t want to leave, but Tim Cold had requested him in the Tank. Something to do with the scientist and the Tube Rider girl.
‘I wish I could stay longer,’ he whispered. ‘Cah, I love you. Stay strong for me.’
The girl made no response. Lindon gave her arm a last squeeze, then headed downstairs. Frank met him by the door. ‘Going so soon?’
‘I have business to attend to. Tank business.’
‘To leave your girl alone like that you’d better make goddamn sure it’s worth it.’
‘It is. The Tank are my people.’
‘London’s people are you people too, boy. Don’t forget that.’
Lindon searched for some smart answer, but found none. He forced the old man to give him a hug, then he closed the door before Frank could argue with him any more.
In some ways he was pleased with the issues in the Tank. They helped keep his mind off Cah, even if the way Tim Cold was moving worried him. Spacewell had been loyal, and his decision to help the scientist escape had to be respected. Spacewell had been led by cold, hard data, not emotions, so something about the girl was beneficial to all of them. But letting in the Tube Rider girl and offering to help her? It was foolhardy. Dreggo or the DCA could rout them for this. They had arms, but they weren’t enough, and the people weren’t trained. Standing up against the Government was akin to mass suicide.
Tim Cold concerned him. Rusty Pete had been a Tank man through and through, a garrulous bear of a man with a kind word for hardship but a swift blade for injustice. The people had loved him and his enemies feared him, but Tim … he lived up to his name in more ways than one. He had never really won over the people. He was too distant, too clinical.
Thinking about the Tube Riders had left a sour taste in his mouth, so Lindon made his way across the city by way of a couple of overcrowded, rickety buses and his own feet. All around him the decay of London seemed more apparent than ever in the stinking piles of garbage on every corner, crushed in amongst the abandoned cars, watered by overflows from blocked sewage pipes. Fires burned in a couple of buildings, and screams were only ever a few seconds away. Here, in central London, in the couple of miles radius around the Tank, the situation was the worst. At least in the streets around the old Palace of Westminster they had established a form of protection and order.
It was insane to give that up.
As he walked down past Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square, the world began to settle. The roads were mostly cleared, except in a few places where heaps of rusting hulks had been hauled into makeshift roadblocks. Punks from independent gangs used to have a habit of dumping their expiring vehicles on Tank ground until the blocks were built, but they served a more important purpose. If the DCA or the military ever came rolling through with heavy artillery, the time it would take to negotiate the blocks would give the people a chance to escape.
He passed a group of kids playing football with a half deflated ball. One of them sent a pass in Lindon’s direction. He deftly parried it, knocked it up in the air and sent it sailing back into the group. A couple of kids cheered and gave him a thumbs up. Lindon smiled and waved.
Further on, a pair of women in their twenties standing at the bottom of a set of stairs up to the door of a tall terrace gave him a wave and shouted something about the smog being clearer today than usual. A bell rang, and he glanced back to see the group of kids running off the street into the basement of another building, a temporary school while the Tank worked to get something more central established.
We’re building while you’re breaking th
ings down, he thought, as he turned a corner and walked past a man pushing a wheelbarrow filled with mixed cement towards where another man was repairing a broken stone wall.
‘Hey, Lindon,’ someone called, and for a moment the voice reminded him of Cah so much that he spun around, searching for the owner, but it was just a small boy in his early teens. Lindon gave him a wave and headed into one of the entrances which led into the basements of Westminster.
Fifteen minutes of walking through dim passageways later and he found himself facing Tim Cold across an office desk.
‘I have a job for you,’ Tim said. ‘We have a collection to make.’
‘Where?’
‘Melling Road Junction. The abandoned Underground station.’
The hairs stood up on Lindon’s neck and he felt a prickle of anger. ‘Why me? Don’t you have some lackey you can send?’
‘I need a man I can trust. One I know who won’t make any mistakes.’
Lindon ignored the attempt at flattery. ‘What are the goods?’
‘Who, not what. Two Tube Riders have surfaced. I need them rounded up before Dreggo and the DCA find them. You’ve heard the radio broadcasts?’
‘I have no time for radio.’
Tim shrugged. ‘No matter. The people are stirring. Word that the Tube Riders are back is getting taken a little too seriously to ignore.’
‘If you bring them here you put the whole of the Tank in danger. I can’t stand by and watch that happen.’
Tim stood up. He walked around the desk and came to stand in front of Lindon, close enough that Lindon could have reached out and snapped his arms off at the shoulders.
‘Lindon, I trust you. What I have to say to you is not to be taken lightly nor tossed aside. Remember, the key to safety and survival is unity. Never forget. Now go. One of my men is waiting for you by the west entrance.’
Despite his reluctance, Lindon gave a terse nod and headed off to meet his guide. As he walked, something Tim had said kept returning to him, flashing in his mind like a warning bulb glowing red.
One of my men, Tim had said, when he should have said, one of ours.
The group of people began to cheer when David called Airie forward into the circle of light made by the trashcan fire in the middle of the old concourse. A little too loudly perhaps, considering the handful of mirthless faces he saw standing near the back, but their enthusiasm was to be expected now they were face to face with their iconic leader, the infamous Marta Banks. Airie, for her part, was suspiciously reluctant, considering how she had acted just a few days ago, but David put it down to nerves. He certainly had a few of his own. Several of the assembled men were staring at him with a little too much expectation, and he began to wonder if something had upset them.
‘The time to rise up is coming,’ he began, turning around to look at the assembled people. ‘Now that Marta Banks has—’
The sudden collective click of gun chambers being loaded severed his words in his throat. A strong hand fell on his shoulder, twisting him around, and a fist like a metal brick slammed into his stomach, taking all his revolutionary words with it.
As he doubled over he heard Airie screaming, but as she started to reach for her knives he staggered to her and grabbed her arms, pinning them to her waist, afraid that letting her fight would see her dead. As they crashed to the ground together, Airie struggling in his arms, a wide-shouldered, muscular man stepped out of the shadows. He looked down at David and sighed.
‘You’ve attracted a little attention,’ he said. ‘My boss would like a word with you.’
37
Reunions
‘Was the mask really necessary? I know where we are.’
The man called Lindon gave David a thin smile, probably his best attempt at humour, David thought. David wiped the sweat off his face and glared back at him.
‘You need to remember who is in control,’ Lindon said, turning back to the road. They turned on to a wide avenue and the single working headlight on the juddering car illuminated a tall barrier made out of other abandoned vehicles.
‘It’s time to get out,’ Lindon said. ‘We walk from here.’
‘What do you want with us?’
‘Wait and you’ll see.’
Lindon and his passenger got out. They came around to the back and let out David and Airie, both with their hands tied. Another of Lindon’s thugs sat between them, a handgun on his lap.
‘Huh. Looks like they prepared a welcome party.’
At the end of the street rose the stub of St Stephen’s Tower, to its left the ornamental corner of the Palace of Westminster, former seat of the old government. It looked almost elegant illuminated by spotlights against the night sky, a reminder of days long past.
‘Are you all right?’ David whispered to Airie, who just gave him a look which suggested the question was unnecessary. She had been silent throughout the trip, and David wondered how much his repeated failures were starting to affect her. He hadn’t considered for a minute that they were walking into a trap, that nearly half the assembled men at Melling Road Junction were plants from the Tank, heavily armed and able to dissolve the gathering without firing a single shot.
‘In here,’ Lindon said. ‘We’re almost there. Don’t try to remember the way, no one can. And in any case, against my better judgment you’re not prisoners. You can leave at any time.’
‘How about now?’ David said.
Lindon gave him the same half smile as before. ‘After you’ve heard what my boss has to say.’
David glanced at Airie, but the girl was looking at the ground as guards pushed her from behind.
Lindon led them down a staircase with a door at the bottom that opened out halfway along a wide, ornate corridor. Open-plan entrances led off on either side, and large, classical galleries were divided up by wooden partition walls into small apartments in which people seemed to be living. The place was like a giant commune; no one had any privacy, but from the vivacity of the snippets of conversation David picked up as they walked along, he could tell the people were happy.
‘Welcome to the Tank,’ Lindon said. ‘I hope you won’t be staying long.’
A door opened at the end and a thin, grey-haired man came striding through. David stared at the girl standing at his shoulder.
‘Raine—’
At the sound of his voice she pushed away from the grey-haired man and rushed towards him. David could do nothing about the open-handed slap that crashed into his cheek, but it was followed up by arms encircling him and pulling him into a warm embrace.
‘You bastard,’ she whispered into his ear. ‘You have no idea how much I want to kill you, yet I’m so glad you’re alive.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ he whispered. ‘Everything that’s happened has been my fault. I can’t change that, but I can try to make it right.’
‘That monster’s got Jake,’ she said. ‘That monster’s got my baby.’
Before David could answer, Lindon’s guards dragged them apart. A man came up behind him and removed the shackles from his wrists. Raine embraced him again, then pulled him towards the grey-haired man.
‘This is Tim,’ she said. ‘He leads here.’
‘Tim Cold,’ the man said, extending a hand. ‘I guess you could call me governor of the Tank, if I didn’t hate that word.’
Standing a short distance behind Tim’s shoulder, Lindon gave a barely perceptible shake of his head and turned away.
‘David Silverwood. I’m a Tube Rider.’
‘One missing his board?’
‘Your dog took it off me.’
Tim glanced back towards Lindon and smiled. ‘He does love to chase sticks. You’ll no longer be needing it though. And now, if you don’t mind, I’d love to have a talk with you in private.’
‘Sure.’
David followed Tim and Raine through the doors at the end into a quieter office. As Lindon stepped forward to close the doors, he remembered Airie, but when he looked around for her, the girl had dis
appeared.
He doesn’t love me.
Airie wanted to slap herself. It felt so foolish just to think it, and it made it even more foolish that she knew it was foolish but could do nothing about it. What was wrong with her?
Raine. David had mentioned her, but seeing her in the flesh, seeing how beautiful she was, and knowing they had once been a couple … it felt like someone had put their hands down her throat and pulled out her heart.
With her knives taken away, she had blended so far into the background she might as well have disappeared. No one had paid her any attention as she walked quietly away from the group and down a side corridor. Within a few minutes she had no idea where she was, and now she wandered aimlessly through the corridors of the Tank, not sure quite where she was planning to go.
She felt like she had woken up from a dream. Everything that had happened since David had rescued her, even the violence and the danger, it had been like an exciting adventure. Now David was gone, and she was alone again and unarmed, just a friendless little girl with nowhere to go. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the photograph Benny had let her tear from the pages of one of his books: a meandering river on the edge of a grassy field, overhung by a willow tree, with sheep grazing further up the slope in the background. A caption underneath read: Naughton Lockett is prettiest during the spring lambing season.
Airie had never heard of Naughton Lockett and had no idea what lambing season meant, but she had stared at the picture so long she could almost see herself sitting by the water’s edge, one hand trailing in the gentle current.
She descended a couple of tight stairways at the end of a corridor, slipped through a door with a lock that someone had forgotten to close, and suddenly found herself in a less inviting area. Doors had been replaced by metal bars in a corridor of close-tucked rooms that had once been offices. A guard was sleeping on a chair at the far end of the corridor, so Airie walked up to the nearest and peered inside.
A bunk bed stood against each wall. One foot propped up on a headrest at the bottom of the nearest lower bunk was all that suggested an occupant. The other three beds looked empty.
